On February 22, NASA announced the discovery of a new
system: seven planets orbiting a star. This star is called TRAPPIST-1 and is 39
light-years away. All of the planets are earth-sized. Scientists believe they
may contain liquid water.
“This discovery
could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments,
places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate
administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
“Answering the question, ‘are we alone?’ is a top science priority and finding
so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a
remarkable step forward toward that goal.”
Nevertheless,
these planets would be hard to explore because they are far away, indeed. The
spacecraft that reached Pluto, New Horizons, would take 800,000 years to reach
TRAPPIST-1. There is a telescope that would make further study possible.
Scheduled to launch in 2018, this James Webb Telescope is more powerful than
the Hubble Space Telescope.
The
author of this article expresses the everlasting hope of humans to find life in
outer space. Because water may be
existent, the planets could be able
to support life. Scientists have spent
and will continue to spend millions of dollars in this quest. But as Ken Ham
says, “The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion
against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!” It is in
man’s nature to try to remove God from the equation, to say that life did not
come from God. But we, as Christians, know that “In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1)
Amen. Although even if they did find water, you need SO much more than just water to support life. Water itself does not mean "life-supporting", much less "life-giving" (and even this, considering life to be something chemical or merely concrete or tangible, when it's not — even most dictionaries find it hard to explain exactly what life is because it is trying to explain something spiritual without making reference to it). And even having all the conditions necessary to "support" life, chemically speaking, we'd need life itself, which can only come from a another life-source, a Lifegiver.
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